Name: Wine Sauce
Ingredients: ½ cup currant jelly; ⅓ cup good port wine; ½ lemon, juiced; ½ cup water; 1 tablespoon butter; 1 teaspoon salt; a pinch of cayenne pepper; 3 cloves

Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Wine Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the sauce

Combine currant jelly, port wine, lemon juice, water, butter, salt, cayenne pepper, and cloves in a saucepan.
Simmer the mixture for a few minutes.
Strain the sauce.

Finish the sauce

Add the port wine after cooking.
Mix in a little gravy from the duck for added flavor.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together17,451 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
Currant + port winetop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together356 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).
Lemon + clovetop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,150 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Port wine + clovetop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together914 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Currant jelly: Adds sweetness and body, giving the sauce its fruity base.
Port wine: Adds deep fruity flavor and aroma to the sauce.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness of the jelly.
Butter: Adds fat for a smoother, glossier mouthfeel.
Cloves: Adds warm, spiced aroma.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (port wine, lemon, butter, pepper, clove):

Figfits better
Orangefits better
Limefits better
Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against port wine, lemon, butter, pepper, clove. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.